Readings: Deut. 4:1-2, 6-9; James 1:17-end; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.
Two weeks ago my parents came to visit, and as there wasn’t much on television we thought we’d try and play a board game that I’d been given for Christmas. The game turned out to be quite complicated with lots of fiddly pieces and complex rules. We learned as we played, with constant breaks to go back and re-read the rules as we went along. To be honest, I’m not sure we were playing the game entirely as we were supposed to, but we got enough of the rules for it to make sense, and at least we all agreed on what we were supposed to be doing and we all had a fun evening.
The rules of the game are there to ensure we all know what’s going on, but in reality what actually counts is not getting the rules exactly right, but playing within the spirit of the rules.
Today’s readings talk about rules, or more accurately, laws. In the Old Testament reading we hear about the law being given to Israel so that the people can worship God correctly. This law is clarified in the Letter of James, where we hear that our religion is worthless if we allow ourselves to ignore our inner-selves and to not follow God’s law in our hearts.
All of this begins to make sense when we hear today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus and His disciples are confronted by the Pharisees for not strictly adhering to the Law. Jesus’ response is to show that the Pharisees might well follow the rules in appearance, but that they have lost the deeper meaning of why the rules were made in the first place: to allow us to worship God in spirit and in truth.
Let me give you an example of this kind of thinking today.
For the past few weeks, Christian Aid has sponsored a bus to go round Britain highlighting some of the loopholes that exist in tax law. Last week, they were in Birmingham and I went along to see what it was all about. (See Tax Justice Bus at http://www.christianaid.org.uk/getinvolved/inyourarea/england/west/events/taxjusticebus.aspx
The problem they are bringing to people’s attention is not tax evasion, which is illegal. The problem they want to highlight is tax avoidance. This is where people or companies pay the minimum amount of tax that they have to by exploiting loopholes in the law. It’s not illegal, but there is a growing sense that it might be immoral.
We heard a speech by a priest from Zambia, and she said that if multi-national mining companies paid a fair level of tax to the Zambian government for the work they do in that country, in other words the same level of tax they would have to pay if they were working in the UK, then Zambia could create proper health and education systems for all its people.
It’s not about over-taxing companies, but getting them to pay a fair level of tax.
And the result would be better health and education for the people of Zambia, meaning that they would have to rely less on the West for aid, which in turn gives the people of Zambia a greater sense of their own dignity.
This is why the bus is being called the Tax Justice Bus. It’s about closing loopholes to get people to pay what is fair.
The point I’m trying to make is it’s not just about following the rules, obeying the letter of the law, it’s about following the spirit of the law. It’s about doing what is fair. The multi-national companies working in Zambia might argue that they are paying all that the government asks them to, but really they are exploiting the lack of infrastructure in order to pay as little as they can.
Bishop Andrew did a theological reflection at the Tax Justice Bus meeting, and he revealed that his prayer is to be happy to pay his tax. I think that shocked a few people: the idea of being happy to pay tax. But when you think about it, tax is good thing. It enables the country to use its resources fairly, and to provide services for the whole community. Paying tax fairly means we enter into the spirit of living together as a community.
When people and companies try to avoid paying tax, they might well be doing all that is legally required on them, but they have forgotten the purpose of tax in the first place.
It is this same principle that Jesus is referring to when He quotes Isaiah to the Pharisees,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrine”
What Jesus is getting at is that the Pharisees are following the rules, but they have forgotten why the rules existed in the first place. They accuse the disciples of eating food with unwashed hands, which went against the Jewish practice of ritual washing before eating and being ritually clean before entering the Temple.
But Jesus reminds them that it is not the external ritual that counts, but the internal intention of worshipping God properly. The rules are there to help guide people, but they shouldn’t become exclusive or more important than the worship itself.
Throughout the Gospels we see Jesus healing those with skin complaints which would have made the person ritually ‘unclean’, and thus barring them from entering the Temple. Jesus constantly breaks down the barriers between the strict adherents of the Law and the spirit in which the Law was given, that we might worship God with full and generous hearts.
This means living lives that are not just morally upright on the outside, but also living a life that is pleasing to God on the inside. In fact, this is more important to God than external rituals.
This isn’t to say that the Pharisees were necessarily bad people. I think Jesus gets so frustrated with the Pharisees, not because they are bad, but because they are so close to getting it right. But they just can’t see the difference between outward appearance and inward devotion to God. For them, the two things are the same, whereas Jesus reminds us that this is not the case.
Strict adherence to the rules runs the risk of making them more important than the worship they are meant to protect. What is truly important is living to the spirit of the law: of worshipping God with our inner-beings and not just our words, and of living lives of justice and fairness which, as the message of the Tax Justice Bus reminds us, help all of society to exist together with dignity.
Rev’d Philip Morton
Assistant Curate.